Disclosure Day is great. But Spielberg overestimates our capacity for empathy

Spielberg’s sci-fi blockbuster starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor may be spectacular, but it misjudges how much abuse of groups we see as ‘other’ humans are prepared to tolerate

Steven Spielberg has converted his longstanding fascination with the possible existence of aliens into considerable commercial and critical success and now, 49 years after Close Encounters and 44 after ET, the film-maker has returned to the subject for the sci-fi spectacular Disclosure Day.

The film follows cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) as they become state-secret whistleblowers, working with Hugo (Colman Domingo) to expose nearly eight decades’ worth of evidence that the US government has known about extraterrestrial life.